BE YOURSELF
ON THE PATH, YOU WILL FIND THE BURDEN BECOMING LIGHTER AND LIGHTER
The most important people in our organisation are the Preparatory Teachers because they are the ones that form the link between Divinity and man. The Preparatory Teachers are the people that introduce God to man. They are more important than what I am because they are the ones that bring the people to follow the path of the Lord, to follow the path of love. So, all my blessings upon you, my children. Excuse me for calling you that; some of you are older than me, perhaps. We are all children, Children of God, made in His image, made in His Divinity, and nothing could detract us from that except ourselves if we want to do it.
The path is not always easy, but as you gradually go on the path, you will find the burden becoming lighter and lighter, which is what the guru does. As you climb up the hill with that bag, that heavy load of samskaras, that burden, the guru comes behind you. You do not even notice him, but he has got a lovely long pin, and he pricks the bag, and all that heaviness, all that sand of samskaras trickles out slowly, slowly. And when you reach higher and higher on this climb towards Divinity, your burden becomes lighter and lighter, and then you realise, “I came with no bag; there is no weight in it. It is so light.”
The greatest tool the guru has is a big pin. Sometimes I miss the bag and push the pin a bit lower down. So, my Beloveds, you have your job to do. The more you do it, the better for you. If you put a quarter teaspoon of sugar in your tea, it will not be so sweet, half a teaspoon, a little sweeter, a full teaspoon much, much sweeter.
BE YOURSELF
A guru can be a catalyst to show you who you are and what you are. He will show you what you are now and show you the potential of what you can be. That is his job. A true guru does it by words and imparting the spiritual forces of which he is only a channel, and being that channel; his mirror has to be clean so that you can look into the mirror clearly and recognise the spots on your face. Once you recognise the spots or the marks on your face, you will not need to use all these powders and all those things with which you cover up marks.
How many people in this world can truly say that they are not hiding behind a mask? A facade. People do not live as they truly are. People live in an idea of themselves. They do not live themselves, but they live in an idea, which is a mental conception. I, idea, is so similar to one’s ego-self, where the ego-self conceives it to be something far more significant and better than what they are.
We live an ideological way of life rather than a pragmatic, practical way of life because of one reason, we fear ourselves. With his big pin, the guru tries to pin you on the backside so that you do not fear yourself. Take off the mask. Be yourself. That is the true message, and that is how to live. Every person, every man, thinks himself greater than what he is. Every woman too thinks herself prettier or greater than what she really is, everyone, except these neurotic, psychotic cases that we are not talking about now.
How beautiful will it be if man can say to himself, “I am this. I am me as I am now. But let me do something to improve myself, to become a better person.” You do not need to be a religionist. You do not need to be an atheist. You do not need to be nothing. You need to be yourself, and when you realise the meaning of being yourself, you will know immediately, I am nothing because you are nothing. Only your assumptions and presumptions, and ego selves make you think you are something. You are none lower than the most significant King in the world, the most prominent millionaire, the greatest Queen, or the greatest genius. You are none lower than any of them. You are equal to them. Because you are nothing, and they are nothing too.
When you realise this nothingness within yourself, you lose the sense of the “I” -ness. You lose the sense of the ego, and when you can genuinely say “I am nothing,” then the real something dawns in your Heart, the reality which can only be one, and that is Divinity.
WHAT ARE PROBLEMS?
Yet man says, “Oh, I am a Professor, I have got half a dozen PhD’s behind my name. Doctor of Philosophy, Doctor of Metaphysics, Doctor of Psychology, Doctor of Bullshitology.”
It means nothing. All these people with these Doctorates are more befuddled in their minds than simple, humble people like us, whose minds are led forward to that something. Observing the glory of that something, you automatically feel “I am nothing,” and when you feel I am nothing, then all the joy of that something enters your life.
Because when you feel you are something, that is the greatest blockage. That glory of the something cannot infiltrate or permeate you, and then everyone complains of suffering. My husband did this, my wife did this, my daughter did this, and my this, that, a million problems.
What are problems? Who creates problems? God does not create problems. Like in our prayer the “Shanti Path,” the entire universe is filled with peace, and in the end, we say, “Let that peace dawn upon me.” Let those not just be words, experience it, feel it, enjoy it. When I go to bed at night, I lie down, and I do certain practices, which you will learn later as you progress step by step, step by step. No hurry. There is a whole eternity in front of you. I do certain practices, and not a single thought is there in the mind. I put my head on the pillow, and people that have slept in the same room with me will tell you that. My head is on the pillow, and I am gone, in total awareness. Gone, and still here. Gone away and still here. In the world, yet not of the world.
GIVING UP THE EGO AND PURITY WILL DAWN
We do not believe in destruction because nothing can be destroyed, but to use this word, I would say, try to destroy the sense of ‘I’, ‘Me’, ‘Mine’, ‘Ego’. It is just a cocktail of all your thoughts – a cocktail, that is all, all your thoughts mixed together.
You see my Beloveds, give away the ego, discard it, and that is surrender – chuck the ego away. Say as I would say, “I am nothing, nothing at all. I possess nothing. I own nothing. I do not even possess myself.”
By having that attitude, greed will disappear, lust will disappear, the love of power will disappear, and purity will dawn. And when that purity will dawn, then everything that you deserve will come to you automatically, without even you are lifting a finger. That is the law of nature. It is an eternal law of nature. The more you hanker after something, the further will it run away from you. Get rid of cravings and hankerings. Just say, “Okay, so what.”
Only two people can say, “So what,” the evolved person and the idiot. The idiot says, “So what!” The evolved person will say so what for a different reason altogether. This has happened, so what – okay fine, I take it.
GOD IS A NEUTRAL FORCE
How beautiful life can be. I cannot understand why people make their lives miserable. To me, it is such a contradiction. Yet, I see it around me all the time. I have gone through misery myself, but I have risen above all misery. Then I look down and see others miserable and say, “God, if you have given me the grace to rise above it all, please, why not all your other children, my brothers, my sisters. Why not remove their miseries?” Then He tells me, “I remove nothing. I do not give you misery, and I do not give you happiness. Tell your children to whom I sent you, tell them in plain words and kick their backsides too if you would need to do it, that the happiness and misery is not God’s creation.”
WHATEVER WE CREATE, WE CAN UNCREATE
God is a neutral force. Your misery is your creation, and I do know one thing for sure that anything you create, you can uncreate. Yet, the central word is tying on and tying off. It is like taking a piece of string and tying it around your finger, and you can also tie it off your finger. It is all ties until that string is taken away completely and there are no ties.
This is how life goes on in every aspect, in every facet, be it your love life, be it the economic side of things, be it any other side of things. Accept what is there. Why moan about it? Throughout my travels around the world, I stay with wealthy people and those that are not wealthy, but they are so, so loving, so beautiful. They pour their hearts and souls out to me. In wealthy homes, they have those big bathrooms, and you can walk in and turn around. There are other homes, such as loving homes where you cannot walk into the bathroom, you have got to reverse in and then pull off your pants (Rajesh & Jasmini home cited here). But how beautiful that is? Because the home is filled with so much love and joy. So much togetherness that I feel I could just hold them in my arms, twenty-four hours of the day.
THE IMPORTANT IS THE PURITY OF YOUR HEART
Now, the point is this: be you wealthy or not wealthy or just making ends meet and sometimes the ends do not meet, you got to create the spark, and the spark meets. That is not important at all. What is important is the purity of your Heart, the Divinity that you could recognise within you and then come what may, it does not matter.
We do know that after May, there is June. If May is not behaving correctly with me, I will find June. Life is filled with changes, changes, changes, all the time. Everything is changing, and the secret of Divinity is to find the underlying factor, which is changeless amidst all the change, the motionless amongst all the motion.
… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang UK 1984 – 08